{"id":1052,"date":"2009-04-11T10:36:06","date_gmt":"2009-04-11T15:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/11\/trusting-obama-or-not\/"},"modified":"2009-04-11T10:36:06","modified_gmt":"2009-04-11T15:36:06","slug":"trusting-obama-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/11\/trusting-obama-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"trusting Obama or not"},"content":{"rendered":"

With protests gearing up today to push the Obama administration away from its current timidity with its economic policies (see A New Way Forward<\/a> and Democracy Now’s broadcast on it<\/a>), it seems apropos to ask whether and to what extent the Obama administration should be trusted by progressives.<\/p>\n

Open Left, one of the better progressive political websites, and one of the groups that greens should be building better alliances with, has an interesting discussion going on about this – see Chris Bowers’ Open Left:: The Case for Distrust<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For some background on Open Left, I recommend its take on the twentieth-century history of left politics <\/a>in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Similar questions as these could be raised about the administration’s environmental positions, where a notably strong set of opening strategies – particularly on climate change – seems to be growing a little limp. In particular, it will make a big difference whether carbon credits are given away to polluting corporations (effectively giving them what belongs to all of us, the air) or sold to them (and bringing in some revenue in the process). But at least with environmental issues we don’t have the same faces from the Wall Street-loving Clinton era as with economic issues (the Summerses, Geithners, et al.).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With protests gearing up today to push the Obama administration away from its current timidity with its economic policies (see A New Way Forward and Democracy Now’s broadcast on it), it seems apropos to ask whether and to what extent the Obama administration should be trusted by progressives. Open Left, one of the better progressive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[691215],"tags":[4447,4458,220,4459],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-economy","tag-left","tag-obama","tag-protest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-gY","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1065,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/29\/obama-as-the-green-fdr-in-the-age-of-swine-flu\/","url_meta":{"origin":1052,"position":0},"title":"Obama as the “green FDR” in the age of Swine Flu","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"WorldChanging shares Joe Romm's \"The Green FDR: Obama's First 100 Days Make - and May Remake - History,\" which compiles a nice account from Climate Progress of the good things the Obama administration has done on the environmental front. According to Romm, \"three game-changing accomplishments stand out:\" \"1. Green Stimulus:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Swine-flu-outbreak-in-Mex-001.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/04\/Swine-flu-outbreak-in-Mex-001.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2649,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/15\/spreading-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":1052,"position":1},"title":"Spreading revolution","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The New York Times has a couple of nice pieces on the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions: an interactive account of the key events and a more detailed piece outlining the role of the different protest groups, bloggers and Facebook-ites, nonviolent resistance tactics, and the Obama administration. A few quick thoughts:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1048,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/02\/from-huxley-to-obama-nlp\/","url_meta":{"origin":1052,"position":2},"title":"from Huxley to Obama & NLP","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I've mentioned Aldous Huxley here before. This 1958 interview with Mike Wallace shows him to be as broad-rangingly perceptive as anyone at the time - with insightful comments on persuasion techniques, Foucauldian surveillance and control (before Foucault wrote a word about the topic), television (which he thought was already \"being\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1185,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/24\/one-of-these-ambiguous-contradictory-mornings\/","url_meta":{"origin":1052,"position":3},"title":"one of these (ambiguous & contradictory) mornings","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/8866052 Valery Lyman's 16-minute film, One of These Mornings, captures the pain, the joy, the happiness, and the excitement embodied in the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Now, a year and a couple of months after that election, Ben Ehrenreich's Slate piece on the dramatic failures (already!) of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1183,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/22\/exquisite-corpse\/","url_meta":{"origin":1052,"position":4},"title":"exquisite corpse","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael B\u00e9rub\u00e9's In praise of humility is so good I can't resist posting a link to it. Why, indeed, has the Obama revolution lost its steam? I think B\u00e9rub\u00e9 must be aiming for Andrei Codrescu's job as NPR's occasional commentator extraordinaire. Read it and weep (at least until you realize\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1363,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/03\/progressive-priorities-jobs-movement-building-jon-stewart\/","url_meta":{"origin":1052,"position":5},"title":"progressive priorities: jobs, movement-building, Jon Stewart","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that the election results are in, we can all go back to thinking about what U.S. citizens (and non-citizen residents like me) can do about the sad state of affairs in this country. Gara LaMarche's and Deepak Bhargava's recent Nation piece The Road Ahead for Progressives: Back to Basics\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}